Kachanovka Park

Kachanovka Park

The estate of Kachanovka, which is located near the village of Parafievka on the banks of the Smosh River, occupies a total of 700 hectares and comprises about 15 buildings, including the palace itself. It was originally built in the 18th century. In 2001, President Kuchma gave the park the status of national heritage site. In total, this large estate features a huge palace, a beautiful park, a church, and the cascade of 12 ponds and lakes dotted around a number of smaller summerhouses. There is also much to marvel in the natural attractions of Kachanovka. Indeed, the marvelous scenery of Kachanovka was praised in verses by our national hero Taras Shevchenko and painted by the famous artist Vasiliy Shternberg, who often visited these palatial grounds.

Before the palace reached its peak of fame as the home of Tarnovsky, a family famous for its patronage of the arts, who lived in Kachanovka for seventy years and actually made it famous, the estate was inhabited by other Ukrainian noble families. At first Kachanovka belonged to a court singer Kachanovsky.That is why this estate has such a name. The second owner was Duke Rumyantsev- Zadunaysky, who received this land as a gift from Empress Catherine the Great in 1772 and ordered a palace to be designed by Karl Blank, a famous Russian architect of the time. The later owners of Kachanovka, Grigory and Praskovya Pocheka, redesigned the palace in the style of Russian classicism and arranged a beautiful English park, which meant no artificial planting but instead natural scenery.The father of the Tarnovsky family, Grigory, who was Praskovya’s son from the earliest marriage, finally received the estate upon his mother’s death in 1824. From then on, three generations of Tarnovsky family lived at Kachanovka and made this palatial retreat synonymous with the arts.

At Grigory Tarnovsky’s expense, for three years, the talented painter Vasiliy Shternberg lived and worked in Kachanovka.His famous painting of Kachanovka is now kept in the National Art Museum of Ukraine. For his financial and moral support for artists, Grigory Tarnovsky was elected an honored member of the Russian Academy of Arts.

The most brilliant people of his time, such icons of culture as Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Gogl, Mikhail Glinka, the artists Ilya Repin and Mikhail Vrubel, writers Marko Vovchok and Panteleymon Kulish, all considered him a personal friend and protector. Kachanovka quickly became a summer residence for all of them – many stayed there for several months, and lived and worked there.

Today it is a wonderful park with numerous paths and beautiful nature. Here you can ride a bicycle, go fishing, draw or write.

Getting to Kachanovka is no problem. It can easily be reached by car, but if you are not a driver, you can enquire at various travel agencies, as they offer excursions to the reserve with transfers, total time being about three hours. Tourists can stay there for a night in a small motel, which usually costs about 40 hryvnas per night.